​With the Common Inspection Framework from Estyn (September 2017) there has been a shift towards analysing progress made in school. Inspectors look at progress made in the current academic year, across the Key Stage/Phase and since starting school.Incerts can help you monitor progress, identify pupils falling behind, and put interventions in place to drive forward learning. Our Help & Advice section has lots of ideas to help, in particular the Tracking Progress page.

The Year 3 conundrumIncerts uses a pupil’s scores from the end of the previous year as the starting point from which to record current year progress – without a ‘previous score’, progress cannot be measured. Normally, this isn’t a problem because pupils are usually assessed against the same descriptors year-to-year. However, when a pupil moves from being assessed against Outcomes in the Foundation Phase to Levels in Key Stage 2, things get a little bit tricky.

With the *old* descriptors, Outcomes 4, 5 and 6 “aligned” with Levels 1, 2 and 3. Whilst the link was tentative and much debated, Incerts was able to transfer information to aid progress tracking in Year 3.

Then, Welsh Government produced “recalibrated Outcomes” in 2015 when the Reception Baseline was introduced. Last year was the first year where pupils were assessed against these more challenging descriptors at the end of Year 2, and then transitioned to KS2 Levels in Year 3 – as expected, it has thrown up a variety of issues!

Following this change, the ‘alignment’ has been completely broken and Year 3 teachers will always begin the year with no Year 2 ticks on the Assess pages. Consequently, there is no ‘previous score’ on the same scale, and so Incerts has no starting point for measuring progress in Year3.

In order to accurately demonstrate pupils’ progress in Year 3, we therefore recommend setting an ‘on-entry’ assessment at the beginning of Year 3. The obvious benefit is that you’ll create a ‘previous score’ for each pupil, against the same descriptors (KS2 Levels) – you’ll then be comparing like with like.

So how can I do this on Incerts?We’ve developed a way for teachers to record an initial assessment for pupils in Year 3, and then push it back to create this starting point.

At the beginning of the year, Year 3 teachers should spend some time observing their new pupils, and if possible, work with the Year 2 teacher to establish what they can do. When ready, teachers should record their initial assessments on Incerts (this will have an impact on workload of course, so your school may decide to do this in literacy and numeracy only, or just the core subjects, for example).

Once recorded, someone with Admin rights must set the assessments as the starting point. They need to go to Edit and then Edit School, and hover over the ‘advanced feature’ next to the Set On-Entry button and click the link that appears.

​This takes you to a new page where you should follow these steps:

​1. Select “All of Yr 3” in the “Class/Group” dropdown ​2. Tick boxes for the pupils you wish to create a starting point for (or Select All) ​3. Press Move Ticks

​4. Read the message and tick the box to confirm you have understood the warning ​5. Confirm the operation

All assessments recorded to this point in Year 3 will then be pushed back so that they appear in the previous year (i.e. Year 2). Teachers will notice that the ticks will have changed from the green colour (denoting Year 3) to orange (Year 2), and they will be able to record pupils’ progress through the rest of the year against this starting point.

Setting an ‘On-Entry’ Assessment for Nursery PupilsSchools with a Foundation Phase will already be aware of the process for setting the Reception Baseline on Incerts. But some schools also have a Nursery setting, and since Estyn might be interested in seeing progress “since starting school”, it can be useful to record an ‘On-Entry’ assessment when Nursery pupils start at your school.

To do this, Nursery teachers need to record what pupils can do when they first start at the school. Then, much like the process described above for Year 3, someone with Admin Right needs to set the assessments as the starting point.

For the new pupils that start in September, simply click the Set On-Entry button on Edit School.

The Set On-Entry button can only be pressed once each academic year. So, for late starters or staggered intakes, you will need an extra step to record their On-Entry positions:

Again, someone with Admin rights needs to go to Edit and then Edit School

Hover over the ‘advanced feature’ next to the (now greyed out) Set On-Entry button and click the link that appears

Use the “Class/Group” dropdown to select “All of Nrsry” or a specific Nursery class

Tick boxes for the pupils you wish to create a starting point for

Press Move Ticks

Read the message and tick the box to confirm you have understood the warning

So, the new curriculum has been unveiled and is now out for consultation. There’s a great deal to unpack. From the introduction of Progression Steps, through the achievement outcomes themselves to the proposed new assessment arrangements, there is a great deal of depth and detail that the Assessment Foundation is very pleased to see. It’s a tribute to all those who have been working on the new curriculum and assessment arrangements since the publication of Successful Futures in 2015.

On the day of the release our Chief Executive, Dr Philip Dixon, was quoted in the Western Mail:

"Today is a start to the process of putting meat on the bones of the principles and purposes outlined in Successful Futures and elsewhere. The 'What Matters' statements will help schools to frame their curriculum offer. Key to this will be the new national model which the Welsh Government will be producing. But equally key will be the resources - in terms of both time and money - that will be available to teachers to develop this new curriculum. The workforce are crucial to its success. The new assessment regime will also need careful examination and robust critique to ensure that its main purpose is centred unequivocally on learning"

It must be remembered that these reforms are concerned with curriculum and assessment. There are some salient points within the documentation that are of especial interest:

The LNF and DCF will remain available to support teachers across the curriculum, and work is being carried out to align them with the Progression Steps.

Progression Steps are emphatically not for the purpose of summative assessment! Achievement outcomes are written in the form of 'I can' and 'I have' statements, putting the learner at the heart of the assessment process.

There will be a Baseline assessment at Reception that will "build upon" the current Foundation Phase Profile to provide an on-entry assessment that supports the new curriculum.

Routes for Learning will remain available for assessment of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties.

It’s particularly notable that the draft assessment arrangements are at pains to point out what the purpose of assessment isn’t - broad, brush stroke judgements of a child’s ability, used for accountability purposes. The Assessment Foundation is very pleased to see that the main emphasis of the document is loudly and repeatedly in favour of formative assessment.

Whilst we look forward to the introduction of the new curriculum, it is important to remember that for the time being, the current assessment and reporting arrangements (Outcomes and Levels) remain fully in place until 2022. The new curriculum and associated requirements will be rolled out to schools as follows:

Many of our supporters in Wales have been in touch regarding our plans for Successful Futures and the implementation of the new curriculum. We’ve always planned to implement a new, formative online assessment that aligns with the updated curriculum, and now we are happy to be able to see some of the detail and begin our preparations. We will be trialling our ideas on the finalised curriculum from 2020 onwards, and seeking feedback from schools to aid the development of our new assessment tool. It follows that a curriculum designed by schools should be served by an assessment tool designed for those same schools. We look forward to working with you!

​​Since 2015, the Foundation Phase Profile (FPP) has been available in Incerts for Baseline assessment using the Compact Profile, and ongoing formative assessment and progress tracking using the Full Profile. We’ve introduced a new choice for calculating the end-of-Phase Outcomes, which I’d like to explain in more depth here.

Why are we introducing a choice?

​When the FPP was launched in September 2015, we included both the Compact and Full Profiles in Incerts. These profiles were designed to track pupils’ progress against the Outcomes, and to help tracking of the Revised Areas of Learning, incorporating the LNF, rather than doing this separately. Following a communication from Steve Davies (Director of Education at Welsh Government) regarding end-of-Phase assessment this year – the first year that the FPP has rolled up and incorporated Year 2 – we’ve been reviewing the options we provide for assessment in the Foundation Phase. His letter states that:

“Schools should continue to use an approach of best fit against the outcome descriptors, using the results from the Foundation Phase Profile to inform their judgement as they feel necessary.”

​After consultation with schools and the Consortia, we have arrived at a solution.

What has changed?

​I’m pleased to announce that we have added an option to Incerts that will allow you to switch to ‘best fit’ scoring on the FPP.

Switching is very simple – someone with admin rights needs to log in, go to “Edit School”, and select “use best-fit when scoring the Full Profile” and press “Save Changes”:

Choosing this option will recalculate the scores for your assessments against the Full Profile using a ‘best fit’ method, rather than the 75% threshold employed by the Welsh Government’s Full Profile scoring form. This approach will be familiar – it works in the same way that Levels are calculated in KS2. As a result, this option should increase your pupils’ Outcomes.

Of course, making end-of-Phase Outcome decisions will include information from a range of sources: the support a child needs to achieve a statement, their confidence, the range of contexts in which they demonstrate a skill, the evidence you have, and the results of tests, to name just a few.

Things to be aware of

​​Please note that the Compact Profile, i.e. the Baseline scores you have returned to Welsh Government, are completely unaffected whichever option you choose.

No ticks, reports or formative next steps will be changed.

This is a school-wide change (Foundation Phase only) – it is important that whatever choice you make, you communicate it with staff.

If for any reason you need to revisit the scores based on the 75% threshold, you will be able to switch back temporarily, but make sure everyone in your school knows!

You should continue to use your professional judgement, using a range of evidence to arrive at the end-of-Phase Outcome for each pupil.

From September 2018, we’ll make further improvements to help demonstrate the progress pupils make through Reception from Baseline.

We hope the new option helps support your decision-making process when arriving at a final Outcome. If you do have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

You’ve probably heard of the GDPR by now - either you’ll have taken part in training or awareness, or maybe you’re responsible for that yourself in school. The General Data Protection Regulation comes into force on May 25th, and brings a whole raft of changes to existing data protection laws. Like you, we’re preparing for the new era, and I’d like to share what we’re doing, and how we’ll communicate this all with you.

Our commitment to data security

Our work with schools involves many different kinds of data - the data you share with us concerning pupils, staff data when attending conferences or training events, or survey data to improve our service. We are committed to treating it all with the highest integrity, and we place great importance in the trust schools place in us as a provider of data services.

As an organisation that is experienced in data handling, we’re already in a good position to meet the requirements of GDPR. Our Support Team - in fact, our whole organisation - is being prepared to answer your questions and make sure everything is in place.

Of course, many of the requirements of the GDPR are not new, particularly those relating to data security. Data recorded in Incerts is transported over encrypted channels to server centres that are already fully GDPR compliant, and thereafter we apply the appropriate industry-standard protocols to protect it from unauthorised access.

Our privacy commitment

Within the Assessment Foundation, I'm reviewing all of our suppliers and making sure that tools we use to hold our data meet the requirements of the GDPR, so when a school calls to ask about our details as a supplier, I understand the process they’re going through! Most of the people who have contacted us already about the GDPR are looking to fulfil the same requirements, and this is where you can find our current information:

… but keep your eye out!

Our current Privacy Notice complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act, but we’re updating it to meet with the requirements of the GDPR. When it’s ready, we’ll need all schools to subscribe to the new Privacy Notice to ensure that we have your consent to use the data the way we do, and that you are fully informed of the purposes of the data we collect from you.

We have just launched an exciting new user interface for our Secure File Transfer website. It has all the functionality of the old site, but we hope it is even easier to use. Please read the new Privacy Notice that we have updated in preparation for the GDPR legislation coming in May 2018.

Just a quick reminder that when selecting files, you can hold down the CTRL key and click on multiple files to upload then in one action. If you select the wrong files, just start over by clicking the ‘Select…’ button again.​Remember to be safe on the internet. If you don’t see a padlock in your browser’s address bar, or the address is not https://transfer.incerts.org, then ring the Support Team and we will be able to give you advice.

We received lots of feedback and suggestions at our training events last year, and so Incerts is changing to reflect what teachers need from the system.​Foundation Phase teachers across Wales have asked us to introduce ‘developing steps’ for the Outcome descriptors – the FPP already had “beginning to…” steps, but from the end of Friday 2nd February we’re adding “developing the ability to…” steps too.

FP teachers told us that there is too big a jump from ‘beginning’ to ‘able’ – there is a chasm of difference between a pupil starting to demonstrate a skill, to them being able to do it consistently and in a range of contexts. As a result of this change, teachers will be able to record a more precise picture of what pupils are able to do.

From a planning and teaching perspective, the developing steps will also provide more appropriate next steps for individual pupils, and for groups of pupils with common next steps. Please see Making the Most of your Assessments for details about how to find pupils’ next steps.​The introduction of developing steps will also benefit your pupil progress tracking. Every tick has a contribution to a pupil’s Outcome, so the additional steps allow you to demonstrate smaller steps of progress.

Will I need to re-assess all my pupils?

No. All your previous assessments are still recorded, the developing steps simply give you more options going forward.

Will pupils’ scores change?

Again, no. Where a skill ladder is ticked up to an ‘able’ step, all the earlier ‘developing’ steps will be automatically populated without affecting scores. If only ‘beginning’ is ticked in a skill ladder, ‘developing’ won’t be automatically ticked because we don’t know the degree to which the pupil has achieved it (but you can of course tick them next time you assess).​Another improvement is that we’ll add the Welsh Government’s picture-guidance to the FPP statements. The written guidance (explanations and examples to help make your judgements) were on Incerts already, but we’re adding the visual guidance too in Physical Development.

We believe these changes will primarily benefit teachers’ formative assessment of the FPP. But rest assured that the FPP and the wider Incerts system will continue to be improved, to help and support the teachers using it.

After 10 wonderful years as Chief Executive of the Assessment Foundation, it’s with great sadness that I’ll be stepping down on the 31st January.

As many of you know, I’ve been splitting my time between San Francisco and the UK since getting married in 2015. It’s certainly been a challenging experiment in transatlantic leadership but as my wife and I are expecting our first child on 1st February, it’s now time for me to take on a new role: becoming a father.

I’ll miss you all. It’s been immensely satisfying to work with such a committed and talented group of people, both my colleagues at our HQ and the teachers and schools leaders at our partner schools across the UK. I’ll cherish those memories. I’m happy to announce that I leave the Assessment Foundation in good hands: Dr Philip Dixon, former director of ATL and author of Testing Times, will succeed me as Chief Executive.

The Assessment Foundation can and must do so much more at this pivotal time. Assessment practice is at a crossroads as curriculum reform advances and we should forge a better path for schools. To do so, we must all remember our true north: improving children’s learning. I believe the Assessment Foundation’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. I look forward to watching its success. Chris Padden, Chief Executive

​In recent months we’ve been speaking to a range of Pioneer and non-Pioneer schools, including non-Incerts customers, about their engagement with Successful Futures. Whilst we’ve heard diverse views about the reforms, schools seem broadly united around certain positive themes, and the need to incorporate change-readiness strategies into their planning. In this blog post we want to highlight some of the key messages we received.

How have schools engaged with Successful Futures so far?

​It’s been encouraging to hear the diverse ways in which Successful Futures’ philosophy is already impacting teaching and learning. Some schools talked about developing ‘rich tasks’ and embedding the three ‘Cross-Curriculum Responsibilities’. Others emphasised aligning their teaching strategy with the ‘Four Purposes’ and ‘12 Pedagogical Principles’. Developing skills-led approaches was a recurring theme, along with applying Foundation Phase pedagogy through Key Stage 2. Some schools emphasised ‘pupil voice’, citing examples of pupil-led, project-based learning, whereas others talked in terms of delivering experiences – what Successful Futures calls ‘authentic contexts’. Several schools acknowledged the importance of self-directed learning, with one school trialling ‘learning passports’ that enable their pupils to assess themselves against the Four Purposes. All Pioneer Schools welcomed what they understood to be a decisive move away from a very rigid, structured approach to teaching based on a highly prescriptive curriculum.

How has the experience of the reform process been for Pioneer Schools?

There was a general consensus that Strand 1 of the development process lacked some clarity of purpose and was slow to get going. By contrast, reports about the progress of Strand 2 were more affirmative. This resonates with Kirsty Williams’ response to the Children and Young People’s Education committee review earlier this year.

Strand 1 of Successful Futures implementation focused on addressing the ‘big questions’ of overall curriculum design. Pioneer Schools were assigned to one of four working groups, each with different responsibilities (Assessment and Progression; Cross-curriculum Responsibilities; Enrichment and Experiences; and Welsh Dimension, International Perspective and Wider Skills). The level of engagement with this Strand ranged from full participation with significant contributions to the final report, through disillusionment with the focus of meetings to withdrawal from the phase altogether. Equally, across both Pioneer and non-Pioneer settings the groups’ final reports received mixed responses. Some schools felt they had consolidated the strategic trajectory for the reforms, whilst others expected them to contain more information about what the new curriculum will look like. Participants in the Cross-Curriculum Responsibilities group were initially dismayed that the form of the LNF and DCF wasn’t expected to change going forward, though their final report seems to suggest Welsh Government have relented on this point.
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For Strand 2 the Pioneer Schools have been divided up into six working groups – one for each of the AoLEs. Schools we spoke to were generally in agreement that the momentum of Strand 2 has made a considerable advance on Strand 1. Using the working groups’ reports as a foundation, meetings have been more solution-focussed and clearer on expectations, providing schools with engaging homework to trial in their settings. All schools we spoke to felt confident of this process and excited about the results. As one Headteacher put it, having specifically appointed class teachers as ‘Pioneer Practitioners’ has lent credibility to the development process, because staff are receiving direction from peers who share their workload concerns.

Do schools feel informed about Successful Futures’ implementation?

Feedback from both Pioneer and non-Pioneer schools around communication was largely determined by the configuration of their local clusters, the level of input from their LA or Consortium and how proactive they’ve been as a school. One Pioneer School told us there hadn’t been enough school-to-school networking around Successful Futures, and that schools hadn’t engaged during the first year because no one was particularly clear on the development process. Conversely, another school told us how they had helped organise a conference with Graham Donaldson to bring Swansea and Neath Port Talbot schools up-to-date, with a focus on informing non-Pioneer Schools.
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Some schools praised the proactivity of their Consortium and spoke particularly highly of their interactions with the AoLE leads. By contrast, others felt their Consortia had not communicated information very effectively at all. However, a recurring message we received emphasised the fact that the information is available, it’s just that the onus is on schools and their staff to take responsibility for accessing it. For example, one non-Pioneer Headteacher explained how between the Dsyg newsletter, HwB, social media and various initiatives run by their Consortium, information about Successful Futures was rife.

Where is the curriculum development process at now?

Earlier this year Kirsty Williams conceded that Strand 2 of the curriculum development, originally scheduled to begin in September 2016, had been delayed until January. In spite of this, Welsh Government were intent on keeping to their original June deadline for the second phase, meaning schools would have only six months to work on the development of the AoLEs. Most of the Pioneer Schools we spoke with felt this timescale was highly ambitious, although one school did tell us their AoLE group had completed their Strand 2 report on time. However, the timeline for development recently disappeared from the Welsh Government’s website unannounced, and Kirsty Williams’ ‘refreshed’ edition of her department’s implementation plans promised this spring is yet to appear. Whether the draft AoLEs will materialise imminently, as originally scheduled remains to be seen. Reflecting on the fact the Donaldson-led Curriculum for Excellence took a decade to establish in Scotland, education commentator Philip Dixon forecasts that we should ‘Expect to see slippage in terms of delivery dates’. However, it’s undoubtedly more important to get the curriculum reforms right than to compromise on quality for the sake of meeting a deadline.
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Putting questions of timescale aside, it was encouraging to hear how the AoLEs are taking shape and being trialled in Pioneer Schools. Now that their development is underway a clear theme seems to be emerging around a much less prescriptive curriculum with a focus on specifying skills over content. In particular it looks like the specification in the AoLEs will be generic enough to apply across the range of disciplines each area encompasses. A recent blog post from the Chairs of the Humanities AoLE group seems to confirm this trajectory:

​Within each Area of Learning and Experience a number of ‘traditional’ academic disciplines are being brought together under an overarching umbrella, but what does this mean for these once discretely taught subject disciplines? Without wishing to pre-empt the ongoing development process, it’s likely that within and across the AoLEs the new curriculum will promote interdisciplinarity across subject areas to deepen pupils understanding.

​Whilst the feedback on the work of Strand 2 has been positive overall, some schools did raise concerns about how the work of the various groups will be coordinated, given how the six working groups are operating largely independently. There seemed to be a consensus amongst the schools we spoke to that this is yet to be fully ironed out – hopefully Strand 3 will resolve this going forward.

How are the assessment arrangements for the new curriculum progressing?

A key strategic element of the Welsh Government’s plan for implementing the new curriculum is the development of a new ‘Assessment and Evaluation Framework’. In line with the recommendations of the OECD, Donaldson proposed a framework that would ‘define the various roles of pupil assessment and school evaluation’ and ‘align curriculum, teaching and assessment around key learning goals’. Accordingly, the framework should mitigate the confusion surrounding existing assessment and evaluation policies. Whilst work was due to begin on this document from December 2015 in consultation with Pioneer Schools, none of the Pioneers we spoke to were aware of the framework’s existence as a discrete entity.

In her response to the CYPE committee findings, Kirsty Williams emphasised her commitment to ‘carrying out reform of the curriculum and our assessment arrangements in tandem’. At present, all we know about the development of the ‘Progression Steps’ and ‘Achievement Outcomes’ envisioned by Donaldson is that the universities of Wales Trinity Saint David and Glasgow have been handed this responsibility. Whilst it’s understood that experts from these institutions will be working alongside Pioneer Schools to develop the new assessment criteria, curriculum Pioneers we heard from had not been part of these discussions to date. Moreover, the EAS blog referred to this work as still ‘in its exploratory stages’, so perhaps this is to be expected.

Moving forward

It’s been exciting for us to hear from schools across Wales about the various imaginative ways they’ve been engaging with the proposals set out in Successful Futures. The collaborative work of both Pioneer and non-Pioneer Schools has been particularly inspiring. It’s fantastic that all the schools we spoke with are so passionately engaged with delivering the best possible learning experience for their pupils. On the whole, the work of Pioneer Schools on the AoLEs seems to be progressing well, though questions remain as to how the practical issues surrounding the silo-structure of the working groups will be resolved.
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At the Assessment Foundation, we remain committed to keeping schools informed and supporting them through changes to curriculum and assessment policy. We also encourage practitioners to take advantage of the information available through the Curriculum for Wales blog, HwB, the Dsyg Newsletter and Consortia updates. We’re also very passionate about hearing your views, so if you have any reflections on the reform process that you would like to share, please do get in touch.

Jane Miller and Finola Wilson (Directors of Impact School Improvement) are delivering Are you ready for Successful Futures? Practical implications of the Donaldson Review at our annual Leadership Conference in Cardiff on Friday 14th July. They’ll pinpoint some key preparation actions that schools should be taking now, ready for the delivery of the new curriculum documents in September 2018. You can check out all the details and book tickets at:

It is important to emphasise that the statutory requirement for schools to report pupils’ progress in all 'subjects, AOLs and activities studied... including all national curriculum subjects’ has not changed (see page 25 of the National Data Collection and Reporting Arrangements 2016/17). Consequently, you are required to report to parents based on the other subjects -- the latest announcement only concerns what you do with comments about the LNF.

Many of our schools report the LNF across the whole curriculum – within and alongside both the ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ subjects. What’s changing is that schools are now only required to report the LNF along with English, Welsh and Maths (LLC and MD in FP).

However, the statement ends by stating that ‘if schools feel that they have effective systems in place for reporting on the LNF across the curriculum they are free to continue reporting in this way’. Therefore, whether you chose to embed the LNF within English, Welsh and Maths or to include it in a separate section of your reports, you are meeting the requirements and don’t need to change anything.

​This is the third in a series of three posts that explore the philosophy behind some of the Welsh curriculum reform proposals, in particular those relating to assessment (see Part 1 and Part 2). In this post we shift focus to the first phase of curriculum development, following the Donaldson Report. In particular, we examine the recently-published strategic report from the Assessment and Progression working group.

The Assessment and Progression Group Reports Back

​Strand 1 of the curriculum design process was focused on ‘strategic design’. Pioneer Schools were assigned to one of four working groups: Assessment and Progression; Cross-curriculum Responsibilities; Enrichment and Experiences; and Welsh Dimension, International Perspective and Wider Skills. The intention was for the groups to work with expert advisors to address the ‘big questions’ of overall curriculum design. The ‘interim reports’ from the working groups were published at the end of March 2017 (though work began on Strand 2 of the design process in January). In what follows we’ll be looking at the Assessment and Progression group’s report, as it is most relevant to our focus here.

The report from the Assessment and Progression working group outlines ‘principles of assessment and progression for the new curriculum and assessment arrangements’. In particular, they focussed on proposals relating to Recommendation 37 in Successful Futures – that ‘Assessment arrangements should give priority to their formative role in teaching and learning’. The paper summarises the initial findings of the group and their implications for the design and development of the AoLEs. It begins with an explanation of formative assessment and the benefits it offers, before exploring how it can be embedded in the new curriculum. The final section of the paper summarises the development process that produced the report.

The working group makes only a few general recommendations for curriculum design, instead focusing more on embedding formative classroom practices through Initial Teacher Education and Training (ITET) and CPD, school leadership and appropriate accountability measures.

Formative and Summative Assessment in Harmony?

​Section 1 of the interim report underscores Donaldson’s emphasis on the interrelation of pedagogy and assessment, stating that a ‘strong and comprehensive understanding of effective assessment in our schools needs to be at the heart of effective pedagogy’. The report foregrounds formative assessment practice, asserting that summative assessment should be subservient to it. It describes this in terms of bringing formative and summative assessment ‘into harmony’, citing the OECD’s concerns about the distortions that occur when accountability is the primary driver of assessment policy. Following Professor Wynne Harlen’s view that summative assessment should be based on evidence elicited from formative processes, the report argues that education policy should ‘view assessment as a formative process which may at points provide summative data that helps move the learner forward’.

Whilst Successful Futures acknowledges the same assessment can be used formatively or summatively, Donaldson clearly explains how the characteristics of formative and summative assessments differ when they are effectively tailored to their respective outcomes. It is perhaps worth questioning how the Assessment and Progression group’s account of the nature of their interrelatedness is compatible with his proposal that schools should employ a wider range of assessment techniques according to their purpose. As Daisy Christodoulou writes:

It may be possible to make some formative inferences from assessments that have been designed for summative purposes, but they will be limited and imperfect in comparison to assessments that have been designed specifically for formative purposes. Similarly, trying to make summative inferences from tasks that have been designed for formative use is hard to do reliably without sacrificing the flexibility and responsiveness of such tasks.

​Whilst it’s understandable that the working group should want to ensure summative assessment isn’t driven by an accountability regime, it’s questionable whether it could be entirely subsumed by formative practices. This seems strategically unlikely in light of the different functions Donaldson and Christodoulou ascribe.

A Future for Data-Tracking?

​The report makes a number of recommendations for the development of the AoLEs in Section 1, including the following:

3. All progression statements to be framed in qualitative not quantitate statements which must be accessible to children, teachers and parents. This will ensure the focus for assessment remains formative with learning made ‘visible’ promoting self and peer assessment.

4. Progression statements in both AoLEs and additional frameworks should reflect the ‘road map’ approach described in successful future [sic], they should not be ‘universal expectations of the performance of all children and young people at fixed points.’ (Recommendation 14). Subsequently they should be written as a continuum of skills rather than being age group specific.

5. In addition, these Progression Steps are not set markers at which schools should formally assess all pupils. It is not necessary, nor desirable, to undertake the wholesale, summative assessment of classes or cohorts of pupils at these particular points.

​The third section of the report also proposes that:

Achievement Outcomes should not be a checklist of knowledge or skills – they will need to incorporate effective pedagogy.

Assessment should not be about levels / outcomes / numbers used to generate data, although they will provide information on learning and teaching in schools. The integrity of achievement outcomes depends on this being the case.

We must move away from an obsession with collecting and documenting evidence in order to track progression. We need a shift towards depending on professional judgement gained primarily through formative assessment in order to assess progress, combined with relevant summative information collected and then used formatively within classrooms and schools.

​The proposals above appear to indicate a trajectory away from using assessment data to track pupil progress, not dissimilar to that witnessed in England. However, whilst recommendations 3-5 all reflect aspects of Donaldson’s proposals, there are instances in Successful Futures that could be in tension with these ideas. For example:

Teachers and leaders at all levels need regular information from the assessment recording system to track the progress of individuals and groups of children and young people.

The OECD sees a number of apparent strengths in the current accountability arrangements in Wales… [including] the availability of comprehensive performance data. An additional strength of the system is that the performance data is set in context in that it compares performance with similar schools. The Review’s proposals aim to build on these strengths.

Assessment data must, of course, inform broader evaluations of how well a school is serving its children and young people.

Parents and carers need regular information to find out how well their children are doing and show how they can support them in improving their learning. The Achievement Outcomes and Progression Steps will provide the context for this reporting…

Teachers need to have straightforward ways of tracking individual children and young people’s progress in ways that show progress over time and across the curriculum…

This tension is arguably unresolved within the Donaldson report itself. On the one hand the ‘Achievement Outcomes… have been set deliberately at three-yearly intervals so as to allow teachers to plan and assess learning without constant reference to externally determined criteria’, whereas on the other hand they’re expected to regularly report to parents with reference to the Achievement Outcomes. It could be argued that these potentially conflicting sentiments support Philip Dixon’s concern that people can find their preferences affirmed in Successful Futures, regardless of which perspective they most identify with.

Nowhere in the Donaldson Report is the current practice of aggregating teacher assessment data to track progress questioned as directly as in the principles from Section 3 of the Assessment and Progression group’s report quoted earlier. However, whilst these statements appear in the summary of the group’s recommendations published in the January 2017 edition of the ‘Strategic Stakeholder Newsletter’, in the actual report itself (also released to schools in January) they are prefaced with an illuminating caveat – namely that they record the ‘early thinking’ of the group and have been included ‘for completion’. It seems likely that the proposals from Section 1 are intended to reflect the more mediating approach advanced by Donaldson, thus mitigating the fervour of their early proposals. The latter are arguably more reflective of the English campaign against national curriculum levels. This revisionary pattern can be seen elsewhere in the report, where strong statements in Section 3 such as ‘No extra assessment frameworks will exist. It isn’t useful to have an assessment framework, an AoLE framework plus a DCF and an LNF and a wider skills framework’ are redacted to ‘Additional frameworks sitting outside the AoLE should be kept to a minimum…’ in Section 1 of the report.

It may have been the case that in the earlier stages of Strand 1, some of the group sought to address the drawbacks associated with best-fit assessment using levels (see Part 2 of this series for more detail) by advocating a full-scale move away from this model. Yet the final proposals are considerably more reserved, perhaps because the Progression Steps/Achievement Outcomes are yet to take shape. In the final analysis the report more or less reaffirms Donaldson’s original specification, leaving the question as to precisely how the new arrangements will mitigate against the distorting tendencies of best-fit models largely unanswered.

A Learning Culture

Section 2 of the working group’s report focuses on how formative assessment can be embedded in teaching and learning. The model proposed by the group is represented by the following infographic:

​At the heart of the group’s proposals is the idea of cultivating a ‘learning culture’ that prioritises formative assessment and has a ‘common language and understanding… for all stakeholders in education including parents, pupils and policy makers’. The report stresses the role ITET has to play in embedding AfL principles as the foundation of an effective learning culture. A recent OECD report related how the practitioners interviewed had difficulty articulating the AfL programme in their school. Responding to this the working group affirms the OECD’s own proposed model for creating a learning culture that is oriented toward cultivating an effective ‘disposition of mind’, as depicted below:

​The framework puts considerable emphasis on metacognition, or ‘learning to learn’. This is a key aspect of Donaldson’s 12 Pedagogical Principles and aligns with Guy Claxton’s framework for ‘Building Learning Power’. The emphasis placed on this model by the working group may confirm a more skills-based approach (as outlined in Part 1 of this series) as the trajectory for Successful Futures’ implementation, though this isn’t spelt out. Whilst Section 2 of the report emphasises the need to reflect the importance of formative assessment in the design of the new curriculum, it doesn’t explain how this will be achieved.

In summary, the working group’s report strikes an encouraging tone and adds strategic weight to some of Donaldson’s proposals on assessment, though it falls short of offering any concrete guidelines for shaping the Progression Steps/Achievement Outcomes. Precisely how the process of their development will correlate with that of the AoLEs remains to be seen.

The Road Ahead

Our engagement with Successful Futures in this blog series has enabled us to situate Professor Donaldson’s proposals within the broader landscape of curriculum and assessment theory. Whilst it hasn’t yielded a concrete picture of how the new curriculum will develop, it has brought the questions around implementation into sharper relief. With Strand 2 of the curriculum development underway, the AoLEs are now taking shape and could be available in draft as early as June this year.

Kirsty Williams has promised that the Welsh Government’s ‘refreshed’ version of their strategic implementation plan – A Curriculum for Wales, A Curriculum for Life – will appear by the end of spring. We will report back when it’s published, highlighting the key developments. Here at the Assessment Foundation we talk with Pioneer Schools on a daily basis, so we'll also share some of their experiences as to how work is progressing 'on the ground'.